


If I Could Change Your Mind

by veeagainst



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, M/M, Post - Prisoner of Azkaban
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-28
Updated: 2014-01-28
Packaged: 2018-01-10 09:36:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,192
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1158076
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/veeagainst/pseuds/veeagainst
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Remus leaving Hogwarts the morning after Sirius does just seemed a little too convenient for me, so I came up with some headcanon that explained it. Remus and Severus have a conversation the morning after the Shrieking Shack scene in PoA.</p>
            </blockquote>





	If I Could Change Your Mind

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first time writing Severus Snape as a character. Also, does it strike anyone as odd that in HBP, Severus would let Peter Pettigrew, who is responsible for Lily's death, stay in his house?

 

 

It is absurdly early – birds are chirping, but the chirps are confused, definitely unsure, somewhat exasperated and exhausted, because it’s late June and the sun rises so early that they’re not getting any sleep – and it is the morning after the full moon – not a great one, by all accounts, though when Remus had awoken in the Forbidden Forest, Dumbledore beside him, studiously looking away, having at some point laid a modesty robe over him, he hadn’t felt too badly – and he should really be lying in bed feeling miserable but he isn’t. He’s ecstatic.

 

This is, after all, the first morning of the rest of his life.

 

He knocks on the door of Severus’s office.

 

Severus opens the door and the look on his face is such a clear ‘Fuck off’ that it makes Remus smile.

 

‘Lupin.’ Severus moves to shut the door. ‘I have nothing to say to you.’

 

‘Wonderful,’ Remus says cheerfully, sticking his foot in the door. He suspects his smile is rapidly entering ‘shit-eating-grin’ territory. Again, he cannot be arsed to care. ‘Then we’ll get this over with quickly, because I only have a few things to say to you.’

 

Severus’s glare is generating enough ice to save the polar bears. ‘Lupin-‘

 

Remus steps past him and sits in the hard chair in front of his desk. He waits until Severus shuts the door – which takes quite a long time, because Severus seems to be trying to make a point – and comes around the desk to sit in his chair. Remus finds that he is enjoying himself _immensely_ and attempts to keep it off his face – then again, Severus is quite a _wizard_ with the Occlumency, so maybe there’s no point.

 

‘What do you want?’ Severus demands.

 

‘I want you to do me a favour.’

 

Severus sighs deeply. ‘Get. Out.’

 

‘You see,’ Remus continues, and he really needs to tamp down the enjoyment in his voice or he’s not going to get anywhere, ‘I rather suspect that you _owe me_ a favour.’

 

Severus’s eyes narrow. ‘Lupin, have you decided to add being delusional to your long list of deficiencies?’

 

‘You know, Lily once said to me,’ Remus says, and Severus freezes and Remus knows that he has his full attention and a small part of him, a part of him that can relish being cruel even though the man before him is much more broken than he has ever been, is pleased, ‘how tragic Sorting was for both you and Sirius.’

 

‘Don’t,’ Severus says through gritted teeth, having found his voice again, ‘compare me to that man. Your, your,’ and here he seems to struggle to even spit out the word, ‘ _attachment_ to him makes it all the worse.’

 

Remus ignores him and continues, ‘How if you’d gone into Gryffindor rather than Slytherin, you could have been friends with us rather than enemies. How you and she would never have stopped being friends.’ Remus doesn’t add that never in a million years would Lily have chosen Severus over James; nor that never in a million years would the hat have put Sirius into Slytherin, his family notwithstanding. Sirius could have gone into any of the other three houses – clever, loyal, brave Sirius – but never into Slytherin.

 

Severus is staring at him now, and Remus looks straight back at him, not bothering to protect against Occlumency. There’s nothing in his mind any more that he is concerned with Severus stealing. ‘I wouldn’t,’ Severus starts, and Remus interrupts him.   

 

‘Do you understand, Severus, why you owe me a favour?’

 

‘What do you want from me?’ Severus asks, and there’s a little shake to his voice.

 

Remus takes a deep breath. He’s never willingly committed career suicide before, and this is probably the best job he could ever ask for. But. ‘I want you to tell your House that I’m a werewolf.’

 

Severus shakes his head incredulously. ‘With pleasure, Lupin,’ he snaps. ‘Would you also like me to report you to the Ministry for any offences? Perhaps how you aided and abetted Sirius Black’s escape?’

 

Remus smiles. The Ministry wouldn’t hesitate to send a werewolf to Azkaban, and he would certainly make a convenient sacrificial lamb to take some of the pressure from the incredibly bungled Sirius Black case, but Severus will never make good on this threat. Even the possibility that Remus knows more about Lily’s feelings for him will keep Remus safe from him forever.

 

‘You know, Severus,’ Remus says quietly, ‘as much as you think you hate me, I think you and I understand each other quite well. We both know what it is to love someone who has been gone since 1981.’

 

Severus shuts his eyes tightly, just for a second, his lips pressed into a thin line, and Remus wonders if he should stop, if he’s gone too far, when Severus says, voice shaking, ‘Do you honestly believe that Sirius Black is innocent?’

 

‘Yes,’ Remus says steadily. ‘I saw the proof last night.’

 

Severus opens his eyes, and they glitter in a way that makes Remus want to hex him, to curse him and punch him in the face and not stop until Severus is lying in a puddle of his own blood in a corner of the room, because if it wasn’t for Severus, Sirius would be a free man, standing here beside Remus, and Remus wouldn’t have to quit this job, and Sirius could adopt Harry, something Albus never let him do, presumably because of his lycanthropy, and Harry would no longer have to live with his aunt and uncle, and yet here is Severus, a brilliant intellect so desperately wasted that thirteen years later the mere mention of Lily’s name can render him into a trembling mess, and Remus remembers his own hands trembling when Harry had asked him about Sirius and the desire for violence passes and is replaced only with pity, because Sirius is alive, and sort of free, and Severus will never, ever have the thing that he most wants.

 

‘So you see, Severus,’ Remus says quietly, ‘I think you rather owe me this.’

 

Severus’s face twists, but Remus can’t tell with what expression. Maybe it’s his own pity, mirrored back but bent around by all the toxic hatred that seems to exist in Severus’s life. Remus breathes out and lets it go, surprised to find how little he cares. It turns out that they are not so very alike at all, he and Severus.

 

‘Yes,’ Severus says. ‘Yes, I’ll do it.’

 

Remus stands, smiling again. ‘Thank you, Severus.’ He starts to leave the room and then turns back, to see Severus staring down at his desk, and so he adds, ‘I hope someday that you can find peace,' and before he can hear a response, he opens the door.

 

Remus slips out of Severus’s office and down the hallway, loving the pain in his joints, the drafty old castle, the weak morning light, everything, optimism infused in every step. He has to go say goodbye to Harry, just for now, but he knows they’ll meet again. For now, he has to hurry home and take care of Sirius. 


End file.
